Ghaziabad: Scrapping the previous 13-member district fee regulatory committee (DFRC), the Ghaziabad district magistrate has reconstituted it with seven members, as mandated by the Uttar Pradesh Self Finance Independent Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act.
The newly formed committee will now comprise the district magistrate as chairperson, a chartered accountant, executive engineer of the public works department, accounts officer of zilla panchayat, a parent, principal of a private school and the district inspector of schools (DIOS).
“The new committee has been formed with seven members as mandated by the Act. The earlier committee is now dissolved. Apart from the seven members, the remaining members of the committee are optional. We reconstituted the committee based on a memorandum submitted by the parents’ association,” Dr Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate, said.
“The directions given by the previous committee will stand and the new DFRC will continue taking up fee related issues in the district,” he said.
The members of the Ghaziabad parents’ association had approached the district administration last month and requested the removal of additional members who were part of the previous committee.
“The additional six members included private persons and representatives of private schools. Since the state government had defined the seven members that the district committee should have, we requested the seven to be part of the new committee and requested that the others be removed. After long deliberations and representations, the district officials directed the reconstitution of the DFRC,” Vivek Tyagi, spokesperson of the Ghaziabad parents’ association (GPA), said.
{{/usCountry}}“The additional six members included private persons and representatives of private schools. Since the state government had defined the seven members that the district committee should have, we requested the seven to be part of the new committee and requested that the others be removed. After long deliberations and representations, the district officials directed the reconstitution of the DFRC,” Vivek Tyagi, spokesperson of the Ghaziabad parents’ association (GPA), said.
{{/usCountry}}In continuation, the district inspector of schools (DIOS) had also written to about 177 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools in Ghaziabad to form parent-teacher associations (PTA).
“Schools are to form the PTA comprising teachers and parents. There are schools that do not have a PTA. So they have been directed to constitute these forums and inform us at the earliest,” Ravi Dutt, DIOS, said.
The members of the GPA said a PTA is vital to an educational institution.
“It is only after discussions and on consensus that schools can hike fees. In several instances, schools made parents who favour schools as members of the deciding committee. In such cases, fee hike done is arbitrary and, thus, all parents suffer,” Seema Tyagi, a member of GPA, said.